Man with a Mission
by Eliot Rosewater
Summary: It had sounded ridiculous when Sam first suggested it, but now that things were getting desperate, it didn't seem so far-fetched. Steve was going to get Bucky a pet.


**Note: The work is a re-post of a story originally posted 05 January 2017**

* * *

The whole thing started because gunshots woke Steve up at five in the morning. The shots were silenced, but he still heard them. And he jackknifed upright in bed with his heart racing. Immediately, his thoughts were filled with HYDRA infiltrating the house. He imagined masked men shooting bullets laced with poison into Bucky. They were stealing Bucky back, they would hurt him. They would destroy all the progress Bucky had made, little though it may be. He'd lose Bucky again — he _just_ got him back.

Steve flew through the house. Adrenaline made his enhanced legs move even faster than they normally would have. He threw open the back door and stopped dead. Bucky was standing on the back patio with a gun. Snapping back into motion, Steve grabbed his friend and hauled him back inside.

"Who is it?" Steve whispered once they were safe behind a wall (on second thought, walls really weren't that safe to hide behind). "Who's out there?"

"No one," Bucky said in the Winter Soldier's deadpan voice. Most of the progress he had made so far involved refraining from killing Steve or Sam. It took them a long time to convince Bucky that they were friendly and different from HYDRA. The whole process had been like gaining the trust of a feral animal.

"What?" Steve said.

"No one is outside," Bucky repeated.

Dropping his hold on the neck of Bucky's shirt, Steve stepped back. "Who were you shooting at then?" His hands still shook from the adrenaline. The all-encompassing mental static that overcame Steve every time something threatened Bucky — threatened to take Bucky away from him _again_ — it was the most powerful thing Steve had felt since waking up from the ice.

"I saw blue jays yesterday," Bucky said.

"You what?"

"Saw blue jays. Yesterday." At Steve's puzzled face, Bucky added helpfully, "Blue jays eat peanuts. I put peanuts outside so they'd come eat them. I wanted to see the blue jays again today."

And that's when Steve saw the little pile of peanuts at the end of the patio. There were birds, squirrels, and chipmunks lying dead all around the pile.

"You were shooting the animals," Steve said, incredulous.

Bucky nodded. "The peanuts are for _the blue jays_." Steve's face must have changed because Bucky asked, "Was that wrong?"

Steve sighed and stepped away from his friend. He really wasn't qualified for this. And being holed up in this house in the woods wasn't helping much either. When Bucky wasn't moping and brooding, he was doing things like asking relentlessly for a mission or shooting the wildlife in the backyard because they weren't the _right kind_ of wildlife.

"Where'd you get the gun?" Steve said.

The question always made Bucky hesitate. He was doing it now. Steve still didn't know where Bucky was getting all these weapons. Though no weapon had ever been leveled at him, Steve worried that Bucky would get bored one day and start using them to destructive ends. Not so much the guns, but the knives — which were more abundant than the guns (and now, apparently, silencers) — Steve had already woken up one morning to find every last fruit and vegetable cut into cubes and Bucky shredding the leg of his trousers, cutting a lattice into his calf unintentionally (or so Bucky said).

It was almost as bad as the time Clint said "take a hike" — he hadn't even said it _to _Bucky — and Bucky took it as the issuing of a mission. It took them seven hours to find him again. Sometimes Steve thought Bucky was just being an ass on purpose.

Bucky looked hard at the pile of peanuts. The furrowing of his brow told Steve that Bucky was still trying to figure out what he'd done wrong. "They're for the blue jays," he said stubbornly.

It didn't help that Sam just laughed when Steve called to tell him about it later.

"Just give him something to do, man," Sam said. "He keeps asking for missions, so give him one."

"Like what? I'm open to suggestions here."

"I don't know. What did he used to do? Back in your day."

Steve shook his head at the phone. "There aren't a lot of the same things out here in the country that they had in 1930's Brooklyn."

"It just sounds like he's bored."

"So am I." But that wasn't true; Steve was terrified.

"Then do something. Teach him to knit — you knit, don't you?"

"He found my needles and sharpened them for me. Sam, he looked so proud of himself."

The conversation didn't solve any of Steve's problems. Not directly. But by the end, Steve felt considerably less stressed. And it was easy to ignore the feeling of guilt that consumed him every time he thought of how much taking care of Bucky exhausted and, quite frankly, annoyed him. How did anyone ever raise a child from birth to adulthood? All Steve had to do was watch over a full-grown man who was fully capable of feeding himself (most of the time) and bathing, and Steve _still_ thought this level of care was too much to provide.

The train of thought was broken when Bucky walked into the room and stood there until Steve acknowledged him.

"Hey, Buck," he said warily. Saying Bucky's name a lot was something he was doing on purpose. Sam always made a face whenever Steve did it but never said anything about it.

"I want black oil sunflower seeds," he said.

Steve didn't reply. There was always an explanation if he didn't react for long enough.

"I saw some cardinals," Bucky said.

So Steve wasn't surprised when he woke up to more silenced gunshots. Really, he should have seen it coming. Still, he went downstairs and pulled Bucky back inside.

"Don't shoot the animals in the backyard anymore, Buck."

The sour look on his face was pure Bucky, which almost made the whole thing worth it.

"They're for the cardinals," Bucky pouted.

Foresight compelled Steve to say, "Don't throw knives or rocks or _anything_ at them either. Just leave them alone."

A few days later, Bucky came into the kitchen where Steve was cooking and said, "Grape jelly. Orioles."

And a few days after that: "Block of salt. For deer. I found their shit in the yard, and I want to see them."

The next morning Steve woke up to a backyard filled with dead critters, mostly raccoons. When he turned to Bucky for an explanation, this was what he got: "I realise I have gone to excessive means to protect the birds' food. I present myself for discipline."

He'd put antifreeze-soaked bread in the yard last night.

Steve ended up getting Bucky a BB gun to patrol the backyard. Sam kept saying that Steve was bringing this on himself by not giving Bucky anything to do. Not giving Bucky a mission. What did Steve expect Bucky, who had existed for the past seventy years either asleep or on a mission, to do when left to his own devices?

Hell, Steve just couldn't stand the thought of ordering Bucky around and making him do things. It soured his stomach. No matter how many times Sam droned on and on about recovery being gradual and how important it was to make Bucky feel comfortable and how being comfortable began with things that made sense to him, Steve just couldn't do it.

His hand was forced when Bucky wanted to start a garden so that rabbits would come and, because the rabbits came, so would foxes; he found fox scat in the yard near the BB-shot chipmunks. Steve caved and decided to take some of Sam's advice. It had sounded ridiculous when he first suggested it, but now that things were getting desperate, it didn't sound so bad.

He was going to get Bucky a pet.

"A what?" Bucky said when Steve announced his intentions.

"A pet. Like a dog or a cat or something. Not a snake. I'm drawing the line at a snake."

"Tarantula?" Bucky asked. There was something stirring under his passive face. It was the person Steve wanted back moving around under there.

"A dog or a cat," Steve said.

"But why?"

"So you can take care of it."

"Take care . . ." His eyes kindled. "Is this a mission?"

Steve withheld a sigh. "Sure, Buck. It's a mission."

A few days later, they were at a humane society. It smelled like animal waste and chemicals. It was loud with yapping dogs. If he trusted Bucky to keep calm on his own, Steve thought he'd like to go sit in one of the rooms filled with cats, where it was quiet.

Needless to say, Steve regretted the plan when they left after an hour and a half. Bucky picked the gangliest puppy Steve had ever seen. Its face looked like it was dripping off its skull. The girl who completed the adoption forms told them that the dog could grow to be up to their hips; they thought the dog was partially Great Dane. The pervious family had surrendered the dog because the one they already had kept fighting with it. And it scared their toddler. His face didn't change much, but Steve could see the excitement in the line of Bucky's jaw when they left.

"What're you gonna call him?" Steve said in the car. He looked at Bucky sitting in the back seat with his giant puppy.

"She's female," Bucky said.

"What are you gonna call _her_?"

He shrugged.

By the end of the day, he was calling the dog Mission. Naturally.

It started out a little rough. Steve was amused that Bucky was amused at the all the piss and shit in the house. It was hard to be mad when the Winter Soldier said with complete bewilderment, "Mission, _again_?"

After a few days, Bucky went to Steve and said, "Mission is defective."

"No, she's not, Buck. You have to teach her. Train her."

It made Bucky frown in a way Steve wanted to ask about, but there was no time; Bucky went back to his dog. Thank God he figured it out in a few days. It was funny for a while, but Steve didn't fancy stepping in wet patches of carpet all hours of the day. There was no more dog shit in the house, and Steve was hard-pressed to find it in the yard, too. He figured it was better not to ask where it was going. Bucky would probably say he was throwing it over the fence and into the neighbour's yard.

Best to let sleeping dogs lie. Never question missing shit, as Sam suggested.

There were immediate benefits though. The dog needed to eat. When it was time for the dog to eat, it reminded Bucky to feed himself, too. In fact, all of them were eating more now that they had the dog in the house. Steve found himself acting a total sap, tossing the dog scraps whenever it looked at him with _those eyes_.

Each morning Steve would sit at the table, continuing his experiments with all of the creamers, flavourings, etc. the future had to offer to jazz up his coffee. He'd eat whatever he had made that morning, mostly out of boredom. Sometimes it wasn't even breakfast food. Besides, it seemed like people ate dessert in the morning and called it breakfast anyway. All the goddamn doughnuts and muffins these people ate. Put an egg on anything and — _poof_! Breakfast.

Anyway, he'd sit around in the morning with the local newspaper (a real _paper_ newspaper) while the dog ate its way through the bowl Bucky filled. Bucky himself was usually patrolling the backyard for undesirable wildlife by this point. As soon as it was done, the dog went under the table, sat down, and rested its head on Steve's knees. It looked up at him with those goddamn _eyes_.

So he usually broke off part of what he was eating and fed it to the dog in bits. It was how they communicated. Half of the commands Bucky taught the dog were Russian, so Steve hardly ever got it to do any tricks or things like that.

"Don't tell," he said to the dog one morning. The rough tongue swiped part of a Belgian waffle out of his palm. Steve stroked the smooth fur of the dog's head. It sniffed at his crotch.

Then one morning Steve was working through a medley of fruit that was about to go rotten, and he was tossing pieces to the dog. Bucky was returning from his rounds and nearly bugged his eyes out of his head. He was across the room and plucked the grape Steve had just tossed toward the dog out of the air. Bucky looked absolutely livid. Betrayed.

"What?" Steve said.

"Mission can't have grapes, that's what. You're sabotaging my mission."

"What?" It was a different kind of "what" than the first one.

"The mission is to provide care. To protect. Nurture. Mission can't have grapes. You're sabotaging the mission by giving her grapes."

"I didn't know." It was all he could do to keep from laughing at the way Bucky had knelt down and was prying the poor dog's jaws open. As if a bunch of grapes would come pouring out.

"Mission can't have grapes," he repeated. His hands were withdrawn and he let the dog close her mouth. Her tail wagged.

"OK," Steve said. "Do _you_ want grapes?"

Bucky frowned. But he looked at the one in his hand and ate it. Took some more out of the bowl with his left hand. There was a little smirk on his face.

So things went a lot like that. The dog got _huge_, though never quite up to their hips. It slept loyally beside Bucky's bed. More than once Steve woke to find the two of them all cuddled up, lying on the ground together. It would have been easier if Bucky just let up on the rule about the dog not being allowed on the furniture (like Steve did when Bucky wasn't around). But Steve wouldn't complain if Bucky kept sleeping through the night. Hell, he was just glad his friend was lying down for several consecutive hours even if he wasn't truly sleeping.

One morning when Steve came outside, he watched Bucky play fetch with the dog. Bucky looked frustrated.

"What's wrong?" Steve said.

"She keeps bringing it back to me," he said.

"That's the point, isn't it?"

But then Mission trotted back, and Steve realised that Bucky wasn't throwing a ball for the dog. It was a dead chipmunk. Steve went into town and bought a can of tennis balls that same day.

Gradually, Bucky started walking the dog on a leash around the only street in town that made up "downtown." It walked _horrible_, always tangling the lead around their ankles and pulling until it choked itself. The choking sound always made Bucky pull a strange, distressed face. He tried to match her pace so that it wouldn't happen, and the two of them ended up running down Main Street. After few more failed attempts at this, Bucky had a different idea.

"There is a park for dogs twelve miles from here," he said one night over a dinner of meatloaf and mashed potatoes. The dog was nearly sitting in his lap; she was a terrible beggar. (To be perfectly honest, it may have been Steve's fault that the habit had gotten so bad.)

"Oh, yeah?" Steve said.

"Yes. I want to bring Mission there."

"Is that really a good idea? There'll probably be other people there."

Bucky shifted and looked anywhere but at Steve. This was usual behaviour; Steve hated it.

"Mission doesn't need to be on a leash if we go there. And being around other dogs is good; the Internet says socialisation is important."

The dog was looking at Steve as if he'd just called its name.

Bucky added, "We can go really early or late at first, when no one's there. We can see if Mission even likes it there."

So that's what they did early the next morning. The dog was as terrible in the car as it was on a leash, but Steve was used to that now. It either ran back and forth in the back seat or stood on Bucky's lap. In either case, it hung its head out the window and drooled. Was hard to deny the goofy cuteness of the way the dog's excess face-skin flopped around in the wind, though. Whatever made Bucky smile like that was OK in Steve's book.

The dog _did_ like the park, even when no other dogs were there. It ran like a nut around the fenced-in area. It would pick something off the ground all the time and bring it to Bucky so he would throw it. Usually, it was a mouse. Worse, Bucky would _laugh_ and _throw it anyway_. Once the dog got bit by some critter that it was trying to pick up, Bucky stopped. They brought along one of the tennis balls instead.

When they tried going with the other dogs around, it wasn't so bad. Bucky's dog mostly just ignored the others ones and did her usual run-and-fetch-critters thing. Once in a while, it would run with one of the others, but it usually just stuck near Steve and Bucky.

There were a lot more times at the house that were good, though. On the days were the sun stretched into night hours, Steve and Bucky would sit outside on the patio with the dog between them and watch. Just watch things move around them. Listen to the songs the birds would sing—and the screaming of the blue jays. Steve had to admit that it was…it was something else when he'd look out the window and see all the colourful birds out there. The blue jays, red cardinals, bright orange orioles, goldfinches, the shiny-green hummingbirds. It was amazing the type of yard Bucky had created out there. When they were quiet and calm at dusk, Steve got to see a small gathering of doe licking at the salt block and a few foxes sniffing around the vegetable garden.

It was damn nice to look at, but it didn't justify shooting a .45 at chipmunks and raccoons.

"I think she's lonely," Bucky said one evening on the patio. He was looking at Mission when he said it and, really, who else would he be talking about?

"She's got you."

"She needs a friend." He held her droopy face in his hands so that it looked like she was smiling. "A friend like her."

Steve frowned. "You want _another_ dog?"

Bucky shook his head. A lot more Bucky and a lot less Winter Soldier in the gesture. After a pause, he said, "Barton has a dog."

"D'you want to call him and ask him to come out here?"

Another pause. He dropped Mission's wrinkly face and patted the top of her head. "No. Maybe we could go there instead. Visit him _there_."

Steve felt like there were a million blue jays in his chest; his smile actually hurt his face. "You want to go to New York?"

Bucky shrugged and finally made eye contact with Steve. "Mission might like city life. She might make friends easier. Worth a shot."

"Yeah. Of course. You'll…she'll love the city, all the fat pigeons. I'll make some calls tomorrow, see if Clint and Lucky're up for meeting Mission. We'll go." Hard work keeping all his enthusiasm inside. Steve couldn't wait to tell Sam. He couldn't believe it. This goddamn, always-shedding, _wonderful_ dog.

"Hey," Bucky said in a voice from 1943, "you finally stopped referring to Mission as an 'it,' Steve!"


End file.
